The cover art for "American Life", singer Madonna's new album, is pictured in this undated publicity photograph. The album is due for release April 22, 2003 by Warner Bros. Records. Madonna announced March 31 that she was pulling the music video produced to accompany the single "American Life" from the album from release "out of respect " for the United States armed forces in Iraq. REUTERS/BusineesWire Photo/Warner Bros/Handout

Photo: HO

The cover art for "American Life", singer Madonna's new album, is...

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(NYT4) UNDATED -- April 17, 2003 -- Coinciding with the release of her new album, "American Life,'' images of are everywhere. Here, she is a militant brunette in a promotional photo for "American Life." (Dan Smith, Warner Bros./The New York Times)

Photo: DAN SMITH

(NYT4) UNDATED -- April 17, 2003 -- Coinciding with the release of...

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MADONNA

Photo: DAN SMITH

MADONNA

Madonna's radical chic / New album reaches for universal meaning, but stumbles on self-obsession

Madonna has ceded her cutting-edge popularity to newer stars, but she still knows how to ride a cultural wave. Her latest album, "American Life," in stores today, has made her controversial for the first time in years -- not because of anything she's done, but because of what she's decided not to do. After causing a furor with the war-themed video for the album's title track, she promptly caused more controversy by pulling the video when the war in Iraq made it too topical for comfort.

The hoopla over the video has given "American Life" a subversive mystique. Yet despite all the hype -- including a CD cover depicting the Material Girl as a latter-day Che Guevara -- capitalizing on a growing mood of social unrest,

"American Life" looks no farther than Madonna's navel. It's not a manifesto but a diary, and not an especially interesting one.

For two decades, Madonna has been a great appropriation artist, adept at taking underground trends into the mainstream at their most viable moment. With "American Life," Madonna has either lost her nerve or run out of ideas to borrow. Few of the musical or lyrical themes are new or particularly interesting: Madonna's pissy over being dissed and laments that she's misunderstood. She's ruminative and dark, grappling for lofty moral ground while aiming for commercial heights. She reiterates the quest for self- knowledge covered on 1998's "Ray of Light" and laments family legacies and stardom's toll, territory already covered on 1989's "Like a Prayer."

The result is a narrative arc to nowhere. Opening the CD with the query "Do I have to change my name?/ Will it get me far?", she ends it by admitting, "I go round and round just like a circle." The "extreme point of view" she warns of in the title track turns out to be as radical as American pie, filled with homilies about how love matters and fame can't buy happiness.

We've heard it all before. On the song "Hollywood," Madonna arrives at the novel conclusion that Tinseltown is a mirage built on false dreams. Judging by her recent catastrophic forays into film, she would know, and acknowledges as much in the line, "I've lost my reputation bad and good." "Hollywood" is a fun dance track, but adds nothing to Courtney Love's similar evisceration of Los Angeles on "Celebrity Skin."

The music on "American Life" moves more than its lyrics, but it's still dancing in place with one eye on the past. French programmer-producer Mirwais Ahmadzai replicates the techniques he used on 2000's "Music": Guitars strum and stammer through digital effects; Madonna's vocals twist and tweak into extreme octave shifts.

A retro mood permeates the CD, from the way "Intervention" revisits the '80s synth-pop of New Order to the Peter-Paul-and-Madonna vibe of acoustic numbers like "X-Static Process." At times lyrics overtly reference musical history, notably the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams" (the "Everybody's looking for something" refrain of "I'm So Stupid").

The album does have its moments. "Mother and Father" recaptures the childhood trauma explored in "Like a Prayer," using singsong vocals and a bouncing beat to create a mood as dark as it is dance-friendly. The track briefly disintegrates into spoken-word horror -- "My father had to go to work/ I used to think he was a jerk," Madonna rhymes earnestly -- but recovers in time to lead into "Die Another Day." Here, the awkward James Bond-themed single sounds like a natural continuation of "Mother and Father," as the one song's last line, "I've got to give it up" segues into the other's opening declaration that "I'm gonna wake up."

"Nothing Fails" journeys into glorious sentimentality with its sails to the wind. When Madonna croons, "I'm not religious/ But I feel so moved," it sounds plausible; when the London Community Gospel Choir joins in for the finale it sweeps romantic love up to a holy plane and holds it there, lush and shimmering under its digital veil.

Madonna closes "American Life" with the CD's most telling revelation as she admits, on the acoustic ballad "Easy Ride," "What I want is to live forever/ Not defined by time and space/ It's a lonely place." Her quest for immortality is as much a commercial venture as a cosmic one, and if it's left her lonely, it's a loneliness of her own making.

Madonna has said that she hopes the personal content of "American Life" will resonate universally. But with few exceptions, "American Life" leaves little room for anyone but Maddie. It chronicles hermetic self-obsession and bemoans a privileged life while most people are still recovering from war and economic disaster. Madonna can still catch the world's eye, but it's doubtful she can make it listen.